They Say Behind Mountains Are More Mountains.

The Whole History Between Haiti And The Dominican Republic Is Complicated. We Share The Island Of Hispaniola, And Haiti Occupied The Dominican Republic For Twenty-two Years After 1804 For Fear That The French And Spanish Would Come Back And Reinstitute Slavery. So We Have This Unique Situation Of Being Two Independent Nations On The Same Island, But With Each Community Having Its Own Grievance.

I Think It's Hard For An Outsider To Capture The Flavor Of A Community And All Its Nuances, So Ultimately Haitian-americans Need To Start Sharing Intimate Accounts Of Their Stories.

We've Had Fiction From The Time Of Cave Drawings. I Think Fiction, Storytelling, And Narrative In General Will Always Exist In Some Form.

To Start With, For Example This Year, 2004, Is The Bicentennial Of Haitian Independence.

It Seemed From The Media That We Were Being Told That All Haitians Had Aids. At The Time, I Had Just Come From Haiti. I Was Twelve Years Old, And The Building I Was Living In Had Primarily Haitians. A Lot Of People Got Fired From Their Jobs. At School, Sometimes In Gym Class, We'd Be Separated Because Teachers Were Worried About What Would Happen If We Bled. So There Was Really This Intense Discrimination.